ATHLETICS:With its Blade Runner skyline, deadly heat and obvious love of all things fashionable except sport, Osaka seems the unlikeliest of cities to host the World Athletics Championships. But in many ways it's found itself hosting the most important of them.

A year away from the Beijing Olympics, and two years after a world championships remembered for all the wrong reasons, athletics needs to put on a good show. That means starring roles, big crowds, a couple of world records and - perhaps most of all - freedom from drug scandals. If Osaka fails on many of those counts (and ticket sales are reportedly slow) athletics will drift farther off the world's sporting radar.

In the 20 years since the second, and arguably best, edition of the these championships, Rome 1987, interest in the sport has hit peaks and troughs, and Helsinki 2005 was among the troughs. Inclement weather drowned the atmosphere, stars were thin on the ground, and when America's double sprint champion Justin Gatlin later failed a drugs tests the prophets of doom were out in force. Can athletics survive all this?

Some or all of that will be revealed over the next nine days.

Yesterday at the Nagai Stadium, a gleaming 50,000-seater with a new track surface predicted to be the fastest ever, the buzz was building nicely, and come tomorrow's men's 100-metre final athletics could be back among the greatest shows on earth.

The showdown between the Jamaican Asafa Powell and the American Tyson Gay has the potential to build into one of the great rivalries of sport. Both aged 24, they can help carry athletics right through to the London Olympics in 2012 - provided their reputations remain untarnished. Of course no one can say for sure that will happen.

There are plenty more big names in town: Jeremy Wariner, chasing the world record of his US compatriot Michael Johnson at 400 metres; Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele, seemingly certain of a third successive 10,000-metre title; Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva, who looks capable of improving her own pole-vault world record.

Yet walk into any of the sushi bars around Osaka - and they are everywhere - and run these names by any locals. Chances are you'll be met with a blank stare, and not because they're lost in translation. Athletics has struggled to maintain its global stars, but run names like Carl Lewis and dare-we-mention-her Marion Jones by these locals and chances are they'll nod furiously.

It takes time to build new stars but that process will want to be boosted by what happens here over the next nine days. For those crowned champions in the glamour events, the countdown to Beijing will be a nervous but also lucrative time, and what does appear certain is that Osaka will be highly competitive, just as was Paris 2003 prior to the Athens Olympics.

What isn't so certain is that they'll be cleanest of championships, though no one can argue the IAAF are not going to considerable lengths to crack down on drug cheats. People forget sometimes that drug use in sport is like crime in society; it cannot be entirely eradicated. But with a record 1,000-plus samples to be tested here there is perhaps a new meaning to the saying, "You can run, but you can't hide."

Of course not every competitor here is improving on just ginseng and ginko biloba, but there is no reason to think those messing around with something illegal will get away with it, and that definitely represents change.

Also encouraging to close followers of athletics is that the IAAF have woken up to the problems facing the sport. The latest round of elections took place at their congress earlier this week, and voted in as one of four vice-presidents - and therefore in the running to take over from president Lamine Diack in four years' time - is Sebastian Coe, and the former British middle-distance great has already presented some thoughts on the way forward.

"I am an athletics purist," said Coe, "but I also have to accept that for a lot of young people sitting in that stadium for the next nine days or watching on television, frankly, not a lot happens.

"When I take the kids to Zurich for the grand prix meeting, it's one evening of intense action and it's easy to understand. We've really got to look at how we present it and we have got to really start streamlining."

If Coe means a nine-day championships is too long he's probably right, and yet there is plenty to look forward to - even from an Irish point of view. Our 15-strong team has never been better prepared or better managed, and there are four or five potential finalists between Alistair Cragg, Derval O'Rourke, Paul Hession, David Gillick and Eileen O'Keeffe.

With a record 203 nations competing, medals will be at an unprecedented premium. At the first championships, in 1983, only 14 nations produced champions and only 25 produced medallists; two years ago those figures had risen to 21 and 40. Irish athletics may not make the cut this time but it's working hard to get back in there.

In the meantime Osaka carries a big responsibility, namely the immediate future of world athletics. The stadium looks fantastic and so far they've proven perfect hosts. If the action on the track matches the weather then these championships could yet surpass Helsinki, Rome, Tokyo, Stuttgart, Gothenburg, Athens, Seville, Edmonton, Paris and Helsinki again.